Total eclipse of the heart (2014)

Installation views as exhibited at This Is No Fantasy, Melbourne. Mixed media sculptural installation: Paper, cardboard, foamcore, adhesives, spray paint, pine, acrylic paint. Dimensions variable. Photos: Matthew Stanton.

‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ is a sculptural installation that reflects on the potent yet precarious place that The Central Australian Desert occupies in Australian mythology. At the heart of national identity and internationally reproduced cultural clichés, Central Australia is more familiar to many through postcards and films than through actually being there. Through such representations, it is both a magical and ominous place of hauntingly empty landscapes, red rocks and ancient spirits. The installation ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ explores how these static cultural stereotypes might resonate with shifting contemporary realities, reflecting on the peripheral detritus that litters the desert in a contemporary context. Developed in response to an artist residency at Watch This Space, Alice Springs, the sculptures draw on some of the peripheral dialogues encountered between these forgotten fragments as they accumulate and merge with cultural stereotypes of the desert. Reconstructed as precarious paper models that slip between artefacts, totems, souvenirs, desert art and craft and roadside trash, the sculptures are propositions from a place that is constantly shifting in relation to static representations.